Wednesday, 21 August 2013

On being Crook, and Being a Crook

It was a
bit of an uncomfortable night the night before last but I did finally nod off
at about 4 am.Why is
it that all the programmes I like on the TV are shown after midnight?Last night I watched Midsomer Murders.This episode had Inspector Barnaby mulling over his aged mother’s
concern that too many septuagenarians were popping their clogs in the nursing
home in which she had a bunk.

I know it
was the early hours of the morning and I was slightly distracted by the unseen
beastie repeatedly stabbing my chest, arm and eyeball but even in my
debilitated state, this stretched my imagination a bit.With a violent death rate only surpassed by
that of a professional and well supplied firing squad, who in Midsomer Puddle,
or whatever the bloody village is called, would ever make it to retirement?Barnaby may be a good detective but, as a
resident, I’d start to wonder about a police force content to solve brutal
assault rather than prevent three or four murders an episode.

Still, it
was the palliative I needed and allowed me to reflect on what, the previous day,
had been a truly horrible day.

It started
out, as such days invariably do, very well.I had been waiting weeks for the arrival of our imported generator which
still had not cleared the port.I had
convinced Marcia to buy a 45 Kva generator off the local market in the interim.We could always use it as a back up once the
big gennie arrived.In the meantime, we
could get into our new house and I could crack on with opening the restaurant.

I had not enjoyed
any internet access for nearly a week so decided I would take the boy over to
Rico’s place, feed him lunch and bum their internet access code so I could pull
all my emails down off their wireless network.Just as we were arriving, Marcia rang to say she had found a brand new
45 Kva Perkins for US$6,000.

‘Is it
silenced?’ I asked only a few feet from a well made rum and coke served over
Rico’s bar.

‘I’ll call
you back,’ she said.

Cool, I
thought as I grabbed the drink.

I had just
served Alex a plate of swordfish cutlets and chicken drumsticks and started to
download my emails and upload my most recent posts when the phone rang again.

‘The
generator will be there in a few minutes, get to the site’

It was an
order, not a request.

Now this
was pretty much a bleeding miracle.In
the time it had taken me to serve Alex his plate and collect my Cuba Libre
(Free Cuba, what we call Rum and Cokes here), Marcia had been able to drive all
the way from the city with a generator.I started to smell something pretty close to a done deal here.After all, she hadn’t rung me back to say it
was silenced or not.I guessed I had
just bought a generator whether I liked it or not.I prefer Cummins but a 45kva, hopefully
silenced Perkins for six grand delivered here in Angola ain’t that bad and the
only thing holding us up was a decent generator, our new one having been stolen
two days before we moved down to the site.

‘Get that
food down yer neck quick, Son, we’re off to the site’ I said as I came back to
the table and slugged my Cuba Libre.

‘They have
ice cream!’ wailed Alex.

‘Ice
cream?’

‘Yes,
Daddy’

A badly
needed generator is one thing.Vanilla
ice cream entirely another.I have it on
the very best authority that if a child does not enjoy at least one over full
bowl of ice cream per month, they overheat and die.I am not a child care nutritionist but I
wasn’t willing to take a chance with my own son’s life.Besides, I fancied a bloody great bowl of ice
cream as well.

By the time
I got to the site, they had already bogged the truck in.I don’t have a driveway see, just a ditch and
lots of sand.I could have pointed that
out to them had they waited.I could
have pointed out all the timber I have lying around with which we could have
quickly made a temporary driveway but they had pressed ahead anyway and now
they were stuck.I am not stupid so when
I bailed out of Rico’s place in such a hurry, I had nicked the bottle of rum
and a carton of juice for Alex so the two of us made ourselves comfortable on
the veranda of the new shop while we watched one monumental fuck up after
another without me getting involved.Marcia hates it when I get involved sometimes but there was no chance of
that.This was a clear case of it being
their truck and their job to drop the gennie on its concrete base so I had no
intention of getting involved.My only
regret was that I did not have my camera with me.Some sights, such as a large lorry buried up
to its axles in my garden and the ever more frantic attempts to free it should
be recorded.

Finally,
the crane swung the generator from the truck and onto the concrete base and I
had my first opportunity to inspect it.

I have
lived with Marcia for over eight years and still don’t understand her
completely.She could be described as
very patient yet at the same time she can be incredibly impatient.She plans well ahead and then surprises me by
being impetuous.Despite my well
demonstrated love for and devotion to her as well as my absolute fidelity, she
is insecure and can be insanely jealous.I had to be very careful therefore, how I pointed out the various
discrepancies with what was written on the six thousand dollar invoice and what
was actually now sitting by the side of my new house.

Marcia was
expecting and had the cash ready to pay for a brand new 45 Kva generator.What I was looking at was not brand new.I lifted the exhaust flap and wiped my
fingers inside.They came out
black.Even before I opened the doors I
could see crudely chopped off cables so I knew the gennie had been hooked
up.I opened the doors and checked the
hour meter; 5,400 odd hours, a bit more than just delivery miles.Then I checked the specification label; 16 Kw.

Marcia
likes to do things by herself.She has
an ardent desire to prove herself as competent as the best.But she is young and is still unaware of the
many ways evil people will scam the gullible and innocent.

I looked at
the oily shit who had turned up in the flash 4x4 accompanying the truck to whom
Marcia was about to give $6,000 and really had to fight hard to overwhelm the
sudden urge I had to ‘get involved’.

If, on the
other hand, I told Marcia she had been duped, that she had stupidly fallen
victim to yet another Angolan scam, she would have been very upset and angry
with me for slighting her in public.If
I even suggested that she had bought a heap of shit, I’d be testicle-less and
penis-less dead meat.

‘Marcia?’ I
called to her, ‘I think they have made a mistake and delivered the wrong
generator!’

‘What?’

‘Come and
look,’ I said, ‘look at this, it is only 16 Kw, they must have loaded the wrong
one!’

Having lit
the blue touch paper, I just stood back and became decidedly uninvolved again.Well, sort of.I called one of my labourers over,
Abrão.I stand a head taller than he
does but he is built like Mike Tyson.I
explained to him what was going down, that these guys were trying to scam
Marcia, that Marcia was dealing with it but if he could just get a couple of
the other lads and keep an eye on the situation in case the gennie guys tried
to get nasty.

Now I
hadn’t succumbed to my first instinct and called these guys thieving scamming
bastards and had, instead, merely suggested they had made a simple mistake and
loaded the wrong generator.Marcia was
also towing the same line when I rejoined the group the conversation amongst
the members of which was becoming heated.

‘Meus
Senhors!’ I said as expansively and all embracing as I could.‘Gentlemen, there has obviously been a
terrible mistake.Just reload the
generator, take it back and bring us the correct one. No harm done!’

‘I still
want paying,’ said the truck driver, not to me thankfully (he was a big bastard
as well) but to the oily generator salesman.

‘Of course
you do!’ I said all sweetness and light, ‘It isn’t your fault that this man,’ I
indicated Oily, ‘loaded the wrong generator and now you must load it again and
take it all the way back to Luanda.How much extra is that going to cost?’

Having set
the cat amongst the pigeons, I gave the generator a good going over.Made in Spain, not bad.Obviously it had been well serviced as I
could see the inspection tags neatly filled in.I started it and the exhaust fumes were clear and it ran oh so quiet.It was three phase rather than the single
phase we wanted and a lot less power but, still, it was a good generator.

It was also
stolen.I had no doubt whatsoever that
this generator had been stolen.If you
are going to move a generator, you disconnect the cables, you don’t chop
through them with bolt croppers.Yes,
they had a set of keys but, believe me, people tend to leave the keys in their
generators so that they don’t lose them and can start and stop the damn thing
on demand, after all, it is safely parked on their property, isn’t it?.There were no spare keys or owners manuals
and they wanted cash.The more I looked
around it, the more nervous Oily became.He thought he had been dealing with Marcia, a girl he had clearly
underestimated and now he was dealing with me.This thing had been nicked as sure as I am a fat reclusive alcoholic
with a very bad temper if riled.I
rejoined the group.

‘Load it up
and let’s get out of here,’ I announced.

‘Hang on a
sec,’ said the truck driver getting all menacing, ‘I want my money or I’m not
going anywhere!This is my Dad’s truck
and he’ll kill me if I don’t come home with some money’

A perfectly
reasonable attitude to adopt, I thought.After all, an honest tradesman deserves his consideration.

‘Who
chartered the load?’ I asked him.

‘He did!’
he said pointing to Oily.

‘And how
much does he owe you?’ I asked.

‘Five
hundred in cash.’

‘Well,’ I
said to Oily, ‘It looks like you owe this man five hundred and, if you want
your generator back, you owe him another five hundred.’ and walked off without
upsetting Marcia by ‘getting involved’.

‘I’m not
leaving here without my money!’ Oily bawled.

Just at
that moment the truck carrying all the timber for my restaurant cottages
hurtled by.

‘Suit
yourself,’ I said, ‘I’m off!’ and climbed into the Jeep to chase after my
timber.

As I
climbed in, Abrão came up to the driver’s window.‘Are we really going to load the generator up
again?’

‘Nooo!You just do what I asked you to do and look
after Marcia’

I charged
up the road after my truckload of timber.While I was driving, I called Marcia.

‘Offer them
a thousand dollars cash,’ I told her when she answered, ‘no more and make it
clear to the truck driver that if they accept it, he gets his five hundred
bucks in cash from us otherwise it’s no deal and he deals with them.’

‘But they
want six,’ said Marcia.

‘I know,
love, just hit ‘em with a grand and see what they say, trust me’

I was just
catching up with the timber truck when my mobile rang.

‘They’ll
take fifteen hundred plus the five for the driver,’ Marcia told me.

I knew it
was stolen.

‘Do the
deal,’ I said.Fifteen hundred plus
transport is what you would pay for a portable gennie.

I did not
have time to consider the fact I had not only handled stolen goods, I had
received them.Now I needed to unload
twenty cubic metres of wood on the restaurant site.

‘Where’s
your crew?’ the driver asked.

‘I paid
delivery,’ I said, ‘delivery means on the ground’

‘Suit
yourself,’ he said, ‘I’m going back to Luanda, take it up with my boss in the
morning but I am not unloading this truck,’Inside the cab sat a doe eyed beauty in an impossibly short pink lycra
dress which left nothing to the imagination.
What was it someone once said to me? Nipples like cigar butts stabbed into Jaffa Cakes. I always preferred the expression, 'like chapel hat pegs.' In the driver’s position, I’d be in a bloody hurry too.

Oh, how the
tables had been turned.

‘Give me
five minutes!’ I pleaded.‘Let me get
you a cold beer from the shop,’ I offered, ‘maybe a Bacardi Breezer for the
lady, just give me five minutes, please?’

I rushed
into the shop.There were three guys
there drinking beer.‘How much have they
drunk,’ I demanded off the Boy.‘A
couple each,’ he said.Good, they’re
probably still sober, I thought.‘How
would you guys like to earn a bottle of whisky apiece to unload my truck?’ I
asked them.They didn’t say anything but
their body language, as they rushed en-masse out of the door suggested, ‘bring
it on’.

There was a
lot of bloody wood and we needed to be quick so I dived in and helped.

I was lying
on the bed with my chest on fire when Marcia brought me a cup of tea.

‘We’re
ready to go’, said Marcia as she sat on the back of the sofa to be close to me
(that’s how small our accommodation is).It was true.We were ready to
go.The team was in, the wood had
arrived, next week we could be sleeping in our new house and cracking on with the
restaurant.

‘Do you
remember how we felt when they stole our generator?’ I asked her.

‘Do you
really think this generator was stolen?’ she asked.

I immediately
regretted saying that.Alex will soon
enjoy an air-conditioned bedroom with his own flatscreen TV and iPad.Marcia will have her flash kitchen complete
with dishwasher (a complete waste of bloody time since I could employ
a dishwasher here for a little over a hundred bucks a month).I would have an office area and shelves on
which I could store my rotting book collection. For the first time in nearly two years, we
would have bedrooms separated from the lounge, a dining area, hot and cold
running water in a bathroom we can enter from within the house.I would be able to open the fridge door
without first having to ask everyone present to breathe in and would have a veranda on which I could relax while trainee waitresses clad in impossibly short pink lycra dresses with nipples like organ stops (seriously, at my age I'm not too fussy when it comes to nipples) serve me ice cold pink gins.

I needed this
generator.I know I should have sent a
runner off to the local police station not 1500
metres distant.But what would that
have achieved?The thieves would have
clammed up or even implicated Marcia.The
generator would have been confiscated and in all probability ended up powering
a police station.There would have
followed hours of giving statements, all painfully recorded by hand.My family and I would still be living in 16
square metres, them hating me with every breath they drew and Marcia damning my
conscience to Hell.

‘Of course
not, Marcia’, I said, ‘you just played hard ball with them and they caved.I’m sorry I couldn’t be there while you were
negotiating but you really got yourself a good deal’

‘I am good
at it, aren’t I?’ she said.

‘You’re the
best, Marcia,’ and I meant that on so many levels.

Let me live
with the guilt.Right now, there is
someone out there who feels as bad as we did back then when our brand new
generator was stolen but when I am tucking Alex into his own bed in his own
bedroom before joining Marcia in hers, I am sure I won’t feel half as bad.

Once the dam has burst there is little to do downstream except climb to higher ground. [Confucius, circa 1973, during his hippie phase].

I can only pass on to you the advice that my mother gave me as a child. File off the serial numbers, give it a respray and for crying out loud, chain it to something substantial so that it doesn't get re-nicked.

Splendid. Now, about your taking it easier and doing no heavy work such as unloading a small rainforest from the back of an HGV ...

Ian, is it too late to meet your mother? I like those of a practical proactive mind: File and respray NOW, do NOT repent later.

Don't worry about Tom. Any advice totally wasted on him. He'll do what he does best and that is to get himself into scrapes. Never mind spiders. The guy lives on adrenaline. He thinks he needs whiskey. He doesn't. Just put him into a snake pit with a generator (colour immaterial) and he'll thrive.

The child's mother stands still as a stone, eyes fixed on the non-functioning washing machine. The air is hot. The fan blades don't turn.

The father steps away from his crying child and comatose wife, looks at the concrete pad where - until very recently - the generator once stood, and then walks off towards the tall tree, the rope in his hand.

I hope you're proud of yourself. Two grand delivered? That's a fucking steal!

Oh Man! I have just walked all the way back from the site (I need the exercise). I come in , sit down, pour a whisky and read my blog comments. The whisky tastes like battery acid now and I have just punched the dog and told Alex to piss off (or was it the other way around?).

I have just ripped half the kitchen out again. One side just didn't look quite right and I knew, I just knew it would irritate me. So I am going to do it all again.

I'm sure you seen pictures of 'The Seven Sisters' white cliffs near Dover. There are about 4 cottages at the west end of the cliffs that are god-forsaken, no electricity, no water, no mains sewers, etc, etc. A mate of mine owned one of them.

In a little outdoor shed he had a HUGE, green painted, 1940's, petrol powered, generator, with an enormous fly wheel. What a wonderful bloody machine. It NEVER failed!

Well I have just made myself sit down for half and hour to read your blog and Helsie is right... But saying this to you is , I know , a bit like pissing against the wind....You are , what we call in the trade..... A para suicidal characterNow I mean this lovingly and With affectionAll it means is that you live life on the edge ( and probably always have done)...so have always been prone to accidents, danger, and injuryTelling you to be carefulIs as useful as a fart in a space suitXxx

I'm with John Gray on his observations. Your tales are amusing for us, but I don't think that's justification for depriving some delightful sounding people in your immediate circle. I've been experiencing some "God" moments here in the Highlands. We were traversing the moors behind the castle this afternoon, blighted now by those infernal wind turbines, and worse to come. But the other evening we sat in the garden and listened to...nothing. It was quite exquisite, no wind, no midges, but the occasional flash of nature, including the roe deer in the parkland, rabbits, hares, pheasants, partidges and of course grouse. I want to stick around a bit longer, (on earth). Scotland will have performed its magic by the time we depart...until the next visit.

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I first came to Africa in the early 90's, supposedly for one year. Six months in Mozambique followed by six months in Angola and then home again. Over 20 years later, I am still here.
I have gone where the jobs were, in mine clearance, security, the oil industry, anything that would put bread on the table. I have a farm in southern Angola and am building a lovely restaurant and hotel on the banks of the Rio Kwanza where the river spills into the Atlantic ocean. I am 55 years old, have two sons aged 16 and 6, a longtime girlfriend 21 years my junior, three dogs and a fine goose which we keep meaning to eat at Christmas but somehow never do.